Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul

Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul
(b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr.--d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa,
Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia), one of the leading
French painters of the Postimpressionist period, whose development of
a conceptual method of representation was a decisive step for
20th-century art. After spending a short period with
Vincent van Gogh
in Arles (1888), Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for
expressiveness through colour. From 1891 he lived and worked in Tahiti
and elsewhere in the South Pacific. His masterpieces include the early
Vision After the Sermon (1888) and
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98).

Although his main achievements were to lie elsewhere, Gauguin was,
to use a fanciful metaphor, nursed in the bosom of
Impressionism.
His attitudes to art were deeply influenced by his experience of its
first exhibition, and he himself participated in those of 1880, 1881
and 1882. The son of a French journalist and a Peruvian Creole,
whose mother had been a writer and a follower of Saint-Simon,
he was brought up in Lima, joined the merchant navy in 1865, and in
1872 began a successful career as a stockbroker in Paris.

In 1874 he saw the first Impressionist exhibition, which completely
entranced him and confirmed his desire to become a painter. He spent
some 17,000 francs on works by
Manet,
Monet,
Sisley,
Pissarro,
Renoir and
Guillaumin.
Pissarro took a special interest in his attempts at painting,
emphasizing that he should `look for the nature that suits your
temperament', and in 1876 Gauguin had a landscape in the style
of Pissarro accepted at the Salon. In the meantime Pissarro
had introduced him to
Cézanne,
for whose works he conceived a great respect---so much so that the
older man began to fear that he would steal his `sensations'.
All three worked together for some time at Pontoise, where Pissarro
and Gauguin drew pencil sketches of each other (Cabinet des Dessins,
Louvre).

In 1883-84 the bank that employed him got into difficulties and Gauguin
was able to paint every day. He settled for a while in Rouen,
partly because Paris was too expensive for a man with five children,
partly because he thought it would be full of wealthy patrons
who might buy his works. Rouen proved a disappointment, and he joined
his wife Mette and children, who had gone back to Denmark, where
she had been born. His experience of Denmark was not a happy one
and, having returned to Paris, he went to paint in Pont-Aven,
a well-known resort for artists.

Here, he stopped working exclusively out-of-doors, as Pissarro
had taught him, and generally began to adopt a more independent
line. His meeting with
van Gogh,
the influence of
Seurat,
the doctrines of
Signac,
and a rediscovery of the merits of
Degas--especially
in his pastels--all combined with his own streak of megalomania
to produce a style that had little in common with the thoughtful
lyricism of the work of his erstwhile mentor Pissarro.
Monet confessed to a liking of his
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
(1888; National Gallery of Scotland),
which he saw at the exhibition Gauguin organized in 1891 to finance
his projected excursion to places where he could live on
`ecstasy, calmness and art'; the proceeds amounted to 10,0000
francs, some of it coming from Degas, who bought several paintings.
There were still evident in these new works traces of pure
Impressionism, and of the very clear influence of Cézanne
(as in the Portrait of Marie Lagadu, 1890; Art
Institute of Chicago)--a fact pointed up by a Cézanne still life
owned by Gauguin which is shown behind her--but basically this
period marked the parting of the ways between Gauguin and
Impressionism.

Gauguin's art has all the appearance of a flight from civilisation, of a
search for new ways of life, more primitive, more real and more sincere.
His break away from a solid middle-class world, abandoning family, children
and job, his refusal to accept easy glory and easy gain are the best-known
aspects of Gauguin's fascinating life and personality. This picture, also
known as
Two women on the beach,
was painted in 1891, shortly after
Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti. During his first stay there (he was to leave
in 1893, only to return in 1895 and remain until his death), Gauguin
discovered primitive art, with its flat forms and the violent colors
belonging to an untamed nature. And then, with absolute sincerity, he
transferred them onto canvas.